pic: Quick, Affordable Wood Chassis Axle Mount

[dtengineering]

Like I say, I may be understimating the way this design distributes the force. Or I may be overestimating the forces involved in slamming the robot from full forward to full reverse. Testing will tell, and I know that the 1726 team will definitely be testing this before they commit a competition season to a particular axle or chassis design.

I guess when I look at it and doubt whether the mounting system is strong enough, then what I am also thinking is that if the mount point is strong enough, then the rest of the side rail is massively overbuilt. Not a big deal if your team traditionally doesn't have an issue with the weight limit, but last year was the first year that we didn't end up "speed holing" the last few days before ship day. We're a bit paranoid about weight.

One of my model airplane building friends once described his theory of figuring out how strong to make a model airplane (where weight is also a big issue) as "Build it and test it. If it breaks, make it stronger, if it doesn't, make it lighter." In this case, if the wheel mount point holds together, then there are definitely some weight savings to be had in the rest of the plywood.

I know this is described as a "quick, affordable" wood chassis, and now I'm starting to talk about weight, which is not one of the two primary descriptors, but it is relevant to any FRC chassis.

I'm looking forward to hearing how the testing goes... the frame itself looks good, both in design and in the video and I will be pleasantly, but only slightly, surprised if this mounting system holds up to repeated start/stop forward/reverse cycles.

Jason